Harvesting season is met with different outcomes as other farmers are counting losses. This was expressed at the Grain Harvest Day, held by the North West Department of Agriculture and Rural Development at Springbokpan outside Mahikeng. The program also highlighted the department’s commitment to ensure that 20 000 hectors of fallow communal land is put to productive use.
Harvesting season, a time during which farmers hope to make profit while feeding the nation. Seitshiro Marumoloe is one of them. He started farming with just a R100 by planting maize and beans.
“Boripana enterprise is a company that was established in 2013 with a mere R100 and the company that has grown in its financial standing. We are running a production of small white beans, the smaller area of sugar beans and maize. We took advantage of the communal land because of its readily available opportunities in the production potential, taking into consideration the fact that farms are quite expensive and we are not yet in a position to buy a farm,” says Marumoloe.
Other farmers are unfortunately counting losses following heavy rains which flooded their crops. This is what they had to say.
“Due to floods we had this season, we had a problem of sunflowers which were flooded, then at harvesting we had a problem on the sunflower side and then on maize,” a farmer says.
“During the run of the harvesting, we got the problem of flooding so our harvest is very low. We haven’t reached our goal,” another farmer explains.
Provincial Agricultural authorities say there was a delay in planting which was compounded by climate change.
“I’m carrying maize here, because of rain it’s not just 100 %. It’s good but not 100% because of too much rain. It has flushed all the fertilizer that was put on this maize. The other challenge is us as government, we have caused it because the input was delivered late. That is why I’ve taken a stance by the end of July, the latest August, every farmer must have all the input necessary for planting so that they are able to plant on time. When all these challenges come they know everything is in the bag,” says MEC in the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Desbo Mohono.
Mohono has encouraged farmers to also consider planting on communal land to address food insecurity in the province’s rural areas.
